The Bird of the River (34 page)

"What exactly would that be, my lord?"

"Striking out on my own," said Encilian, flashing a smile. "Just like old Lord Harrik, eh? Founding my own Family. Why be a second-rate Diamondcut when I could be the first of the Whitegolds? I suppose you found out about Stryon."

Krelan nodded. His face was still impassive, but Eliss saw the building fury in his eyes. "He was one of the Family, wasn't he?"

Encilian made a dismissive gesture. "One of Father's bastards. Your brother found him for me, as a matter of fact. Perfect match, wasn't he?
Nobody guessed'
." He edged forward to the front of his chair, face alight. "What was it like when the body was brought home? Did they weep for me? Did they hire a Cursing Priest? Your brother writes the most unimaginative letters. You must have been there. What was the funeral like? Tell me!"

"Appropriate for a Diamondcut, my lord. Was my lord aware he'd fathered a bastard of his own?"

"What? I never."

"In Krolerett, my lord. A tavern girl."

"Oh,
that.
Gods, what do you take me for? She was some silly cow Stryon was infatuated with. I let him pose as me to court her. Seemed a good idea to muddy the trail and I wanted to see whether his clothes fit me. So the dirty deed had consequences? I did him a favor, then. She can't come whining after him where
he's
gone!" Encilian laughed and smacked the garden table. "All that and he gets my niche in the family vault too. Which is a nice one. No, he really can't complain."

"He was an innocent man and a Diamondcut, and you murdered him."

"What? He was nothing!"

"He wasn't a broker for thieves. He never betrayed his own people to demons," said Krelan, gasping as though it took more air than was in his body to get the accusations out. "He never dishonored his family. I saw the bodies lying in the streets at Synpelene. You're a disgrace, Encilian." His hand was trembling as he gripped his knife. Encilian's smile faded.

"You little piece of shit. You
disapprove
? You? And here I thought you were the brains of your family. Well, it's a shame, Krelan, but I can get along without you.
Kill yourself."

Krelan's arm swung up, as though by reflex, and halted. Eliss caught her breath.

"No," said Krelan. "Your father gave me a job. He wanted your head brought home."

Encilian gaped at him a moment. He leaned back, chuckling as if in disbelief. "You took a vow, remem--" and then without warning kicked the garden table straight at Krelan. The table caught Krelan full in the chest and carried him backward, down a flight of three little steps to the lower terrace, where he lay sprawling. Encilian, with remarkable speed for a man of his bulk, grabbed up the iron-bound box and hurled it straight at Krelan's head. Eliss saw Krelan jerk as the box hit him. Encilian drew a knife from inside his robe and started down the steps, muttering "Fucking disloyal little--"

Eliss wanted, more than anything, to slink away down the hill, and knew it was what she ought to do, and that it was what Krelan wanted her to do. But as in a dream she found herself diving through the hedge onto Encilian's back, knocking him down the stairs too. She hoped he'd fall on his knife, but he didn't. She pounded his head into the flagstones, once and then again, but he got hold of her arms and wrenched her off to the side, and a second later he had rolled over on her and was holding her down, glaring at her. Blinking, catching his breath, he began to grin.

"Hello," he said. "Who the hell are you, Gorgeous?"

He'll kill me. He'll rape me and kill me and Krelan and I will be thrown in a ditch together and I did it for love, I stupidly, stupidly did it for love.
Rage gave her strength to heave upward with her whole body. She nearly threw him off. He hit his elbow on the flagstones falling back down, and grunted in pain. Furious, he struck her across the face and got his hand on her throat. Pushing against her windpipe, he raised himself to his knees. The silver chain and crystal charm she wore cut into the skin of her neck. He picked up his knife.

"How did a shriveled little maggot like Krelan get a beauty like you?" said Encilian, panting. "You want to die with him? You'll die with him, bitch. But I get you first."

Through her pain and desperation, Eliss heard Uncle Steelplate roaring at Falena, saw Falena knocked to the floor, and all she could do was huddle under the bed with Alder and pray--

I will NOT be that frightened little girl--

Eliss sat up and punched Encilian in the crotch, as hard as she could. He dropped his knife and doubled up. She dragged herself backward and away from him, struggling to her feet. She hesitated a moment too long before deciding to reach for his knife. He snatched her wrist and jerked her down to her knees beside him. She grabbed the knife with her other hand. He grabbed it too. There was a long moment of silence punctuated only by Encilian's harsh breathing as they strained together. Sweat was running down his face. His teeth were bared. Eliss felt her wrist bending, knew the bones were going to snap soon.
Holy gods, please--

The wind was blowing loudly. The soft moan coming over the hilltop had taken on an odd bass note.

Eliss felt the flagstones under her knees beginning to vibrate. Hazily she wondered whether an earthquake had chosen that moment to happen. Suddenly the light was gone, as though the day had jumped hours forward into twilight. She looked up involuntarily, and Encilian looked too, and they saw the black cloud mass descending on the house. There came a pattering sound like rain. Eliss thought it
was
rain, until she saw the green bits leaping into the air and realized the moss from between the flagstones was shooting upward in little jets of mud and water. They spattered against Encilian's face, into his eyes, into his nose and mouth. He let go of her wrists and clawed at his face. Eliss crawled away on her knees and elbows. She averted her face from the flying muck, but it whirled around her like flies, avoiding contact.

There was a deep shattering sound. The house was rattling. Eliss could hear Encilian's servants screaming and running out the front door. Flagstones flipped aside as water fountained from the earth, scattering pieces of broken terra-cotta that bounced and clattered away. The sewer pipes under the house had broken, under the strain of a massive surge of dirty water fighting its way skyward from the depths of the lake. The water seemed to be aiming itself at Encilian, striking him from every direction, but instead of splashing off him it wrapped itself around him and clung, as though it became viscous on contact. It turned him round and round, like a floating ball in a fountain. His mouth was open and Eliss thought she could hear him screaming, under the thunder of the broken pipes and the growling wind.

And what was that new noise? A sizzling, a hissing: the very mold and moss was tearing itself from the limestone blocks of the house and flying through the air like leaves, dancing in the slipstream around the spinning cocoon of filthy green water until they too were pulled into it. Encilian was only briefly visible now in the rotating column. Eliss, staring, followed it up with her eyes and saw the moving shape in the boiling black cloud, the form like a dragon or some other sinuous green thing, and yet--no--here was a glimpse of massive shoulder, an indistinct profile, gigantic and dark and blurred. A lashing beard the color of waterweed, that broke the roof-tiles on the house. An immense thick hand reaching down, a glimpse of a vast raging countenance ...

Eliss averted her eyes. She looked straight into Krelan's blood-covered face. He had been pulling himself across the mud toward her. She reached out to him and they gripped each other, shutting their eyes tight, as the noise grew deafening and, yes, Encilian still screamed. Even under the elemental tumult they could hear him screaming.

AT SOME POINT IT ALL STOPPED. The world had narrowed to the smell of river mud, the rank fragrance of low tide. It was all around, overpowering. Gradually hearing came back: the sound of dirty water dripping from every leaf in the hedge, streaming and hissing down the walls. Cautiously Eliss opened her eyes, just in time to see Encilian's body come hurtling down out of the clouds and smack into the mud by Shellback's corpse a few feet away, boneless as a dead mackerel.

Krelan was trying to get to his feet. She helped him stand. The deluge had washed some of the blood from his face but it still trickled from a gash on his scalp. Eliss pressed two fingers to it, to try to stop the bleeding. Krelan winced absently, staring at Encilian's body. She didn't want to look, but turned and looked anyway.

Encilian's clothes had been sucked away by the storm water. Fat and pale, blotched with green and black mold, he looked as though he'd lain in the bottom of the river for months.

SHE HELPED KRELAN to the wrought-iron chair. He sat, pressing his sleeve to the gash but unable to take his eyes off Encilian, as she looked for his hat.
What do you do,
she thought numbly,
what do you do when the gods actually answer your prayers? If it was the gods. I don't know what it was, do I?
Finding Krelan's hat, she shook out the mud and water and brought it back. Krelan cut a few inches off his sleeve and wadded it up for a compress, and with the hat jammed on his head to hold it in place the bleeding finally stopped.

"We need to go," said Eliss, startled at how loud her voice sounded. "Those servants will be coming back."

Krelan got to his feet unsteadily. He staggered over to Shellback's body and, after a moment's searching, found a long knife concealed under his clothing.

"Where's that box?" Krelan said, turning away from the dead man. "Encilian still owes his head."

THEY FILLED UP THE BOX with salt when they got back to the
Bird of the River,
and hid it away in the cargo deck under the bows. So many of the crew had gone ashore that no one saw them hiding it. Then it was time to go present themselves to Mr. Riveter, who clutched his own head when he saw the gash on Krelan's scalp.

"What did I tell you! Didn't I tell you to stay on board? Didn't I
tell
you?"

"I didn't do
anything,"
Wolkin protested from where he was seated on one of the forward capstans, fishing. Then he realized the tirade was not directed at him, and ran close with ears wide to listen.

"I deeply apologize, Mr. Riveter," said Krelan. "This time I can assure you it will never happen again. I swear by all the gods."

"Look at that! Look at that, you're going to need stitches! What'll your lord father say, assuming you ever get back to him alive?" Mr. Riveter swept his gaze around the deck and saw only Wolkin. "Wolkin! Fetch Daddy his medicine kit."

"Aye, sir!" Wolkin took off like a shot.

So Krelan had to sit on a barrel and endure having his gash sewn shut by Mr. Riveter, being scolded all the while. Eliss wandered across the deck and stood looking down the companionway. The smell of river mud was overpowering. The walls were damp. Water trickled from under the great cabin's door. Eliss contemplated knocking. She decided against it.

BECAUSE THE WINDMILL TOWER WAS VACANT that night, with all the musicians ashore, they slept together there, quite chastely. Krelan got a bunk to himself and Eliss slept on a thick pile of borrowed blankets on the floor. But for long hours before sleep would come they lay side by side in the bunk, staring into the darkness and listening to the occasional gentle thump as the wind vanes caught an errant gust and turned.

"At least it's over now," said Eliss, watching the shadowy outline of Krelan's profile. He sighed and nodded.

"It's done. But so am I. I broke my vow."

"But
you
didn't kill him. That was the--"

"Don't," said Krelan, shivering. "Don't let's talk about that. One of my tutors used to say, 'Pray to the holy gods, but never loud enough for them to actually hear you.' "

"You had tutors?"

"Of course I had. Any shadow of the Family must be well-educated. Polished. Schooled in subtlety. I was poured into a certain mold to become a certain man. And now ... it's all gone for nothing. My entire life. Everything I was raised for, centuries of tradition, everything I'd planned to be."

"Life is like that sometimes," said Eliss. "One day everything is going along the way it always has, and you think it will never change, and then--you lose everything you ever knew. I never thought my mother would die."

Krelan was silent a moment. "That's true," he said. "Childish of me, to imagine I'm the only one in the world with my sorrows. That's something, anyway, -- your mother's death is avenged."

"It doesn't bring her back, though."

"I know. But I wish I'd had the honor of killing Encilian, for your mother's sake. Ye gods, what blasphemy I talk! If he hadn't hit me with that table I'd have driven my knife into his heart for bringing dishonor on the Family. And then ... a
good
Family retainer would use the blade on himself next. I would have been dead anyway, as soon as I got home. What a brood of monsters we must seem like, to you.

"They do," said Eliss. "You don't. I finally saw one of the great big Diamondcuts and he was nothing special. I knew men like that my whole life growing up. Nothing like a god! Just a bully with a knife.
You
knew that was all he was too. You know it's all lies and made-up glory, really. Why should you go back and die for those people?"

"But what else is there to do with my life?"

"You could stay on the
Bird,"
said Eliss quietly. Krelan groped in the darkness and found her hand.

"You know, I think I'd like that," he said.

ELISS SHIFTED THE BOX from one hip to the other, trying not to think about what was inside. It was an ordinary-looking crate, perhaps twice the size of the ironbound box she and Krelan had brought back down the hill with them.

"Is that too heavy for you,
Mama?"
asked Wolkin with a broad wink. "You want me to carry it, Mama?"

"No, dear, but thank you all the same," she told him, in Pentra's most silver-plated accents.